Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
No freedom after midnight
|
The 12 a.m. deadline forces Chennai to look for new ways to party, says SHONALI MUTHALALY
|
It's official. We are now a city of Cinderellas.
When the clock strikes twelve, beers turn into pumpkins and dance floors empty. All music dies, house lights come on and reluctant party people are booted out of bars, pubs and clubs — with or without their glass slippers. In one popular pub, the staff even pull out brooms and begin sweeping around tables, just to ensure that their customers get the message. At swank hotels, bewildered Chennai-ites have their cocktails whipped away at midnight. At clubs, DJs play the last song at 11-45 p.m., before imploring people to say good night, and goodbye.
This, in a city with crowds that, till recently, didn't stop dancing till they were ready for breakfast. Now, with the law that everyone hangs up their dancing shoes at Cinderella-hour being enforced with a passion, the city's entire clubbing scene has changed dramatically. And very reluctantly.
Dancing till dawn
Chennai-ites have always believed in starting partying late. Traditionally, Saturday night begins only by 11 p.m. (After all, mascara takes quite a while to get just right, darling!) After a late dinner, people would hit a city pub, and follow that with a drive down the East Coast Road, to a beach disco where they would dance till the sun came up.
And until recently, clubs that ostensibly fell outside Chennai's jurisdiction stayed open till 2 a.m. or more, so party people weren't really forced to change their ways.
But now everyone's been told to shut shop by 12, or shut shop for good. And the East Coast Road, the last refuge of the party animal, is closed for business. Clubs, now embarrassingly empty on most nights, have had to find new ways to get the city partying again. It's the dawn of a new club culture: getting started earlier, lounge music replacing hardcore dance and trance, people just "hanging out" instead of partying hard.
"Chennai-ites need to be educated about partying early," says Zahir, manager of Speed, a Formula One Pub, stating that people in the city find it tough to kick the late night habit. Kartick P. Sivaram, Executive Director of Aruna Hotels Limited, where Platinum is located, agrees. "We are trying to draw in partygoers earlier," he adds, stating that Platinum now opens as a pub-club at 6 p.m., with no cover charge till 10 p.m., encouraging people to head there right after work to unwind. At Speed, which has managed to both retain its regulars and attract a new crowd, Zahir says they have been working on bringing different music and DJs to the city, with specific nights for Trance, Hip Hop, Rock and House.
Theme nights, women's nights, happy hours... evidently, everyone is working harder than ever to tempt partygoers, now that clubbing is being seen as "way too much of an effort" thanks to the deadline. "Everyone's calling friends over and chilling out at home now," sighs a manager, who claims that clubs are earning at least fifty per cent less than usual.
However, with `party early' slowly catching on as the new mantra, this is the best time for `lounge bars,' which concentrate more on cocktails and conversation than on smoke and salsa. So places like The Lounge at Savera, where people can relax over wine and snooker, or the just-opened Provogue Lounge Bar, offering slow rock, inventive drinks and fusion food, are beginning to attract audiences — usually above 35 — who want to get together for relatively quiet evenings, after work, or even over the weekend.
There also seems to be more of a focus on women now. Besides the usual `women's nights' at various pubs, there's even a pub — H2O at Harrisons — that has introduced `women only' hours between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m., thereby neatly capturing the new hip kitty party crowd, which believes chilled Mojitoes go better with lunch than steaming tea.
Chennai could have taught Cinderella a thing or two, huh! All that unnecessary fooling about with pumpkins... when all she had to do was grab a blender, add some vodka, and make it into an afternoon cocktail. Then snag the Prince by eleven forty-five p.m. and head home before the rat driving her around was pulled up for not having his papers at twelve.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
|
